KING ÆGEUS

The fortress, which Cecrops made his residence, was from his own name called Cecropia, and was peculiarly recommended to the patronage of the Egyptian goddess whom the Greeks worshipped by the name of Athene, and the Latins of Minerva. Many, induced by the neighbourhood of the port, and expecting security both from the fortress and from its tutelary deity, erected their habitations around the foot of the rock; and thus arose early a considerable town, which, from the name of the goddess, was called Athenai, or, as we after the French have corrupted it, Athens.

This account of the rise of Athens, and of the origin of its government, though possibly a village and even a fortress may have existed there before Cecrops, is supported by a more general concurrence of traditional testimony, and more complete consonancy to the rest of history, than is often found for that remote age. The subsequent Attic annals are far less satisfactory. Strabo declines the endeavour to reconcile their inconsistencies; and Plutarch gives a strong picture of the uncertainties and voids which occurred to him in attempting to form a history from them. “As geographers,” he says, “in the outer parts of their maps distinguish those countries which lie beyond their knowledge with such remarks as these, All here is dry and desert sand, or marsh darkened with perpetual fog, or Scythian cold, or frozen sea; so of the earliest history we may say, All here is monstrous and tragical land, occupied only by poets and fabulists.” If such apology was reckoned necessary by Plutarch for such an account as could in his time be collected of the life of Theseus, none can now be wanting for omitting all disquisition concerning the four or seven kings, for even their number is not ascertained, who are said to have governed Attica from Cecrops to Ægeus, father of that hero. The name of Amphictyon, indeed, whose name is in the list, excites a reasonable curiosity: but as it is not in his government of Athens that he is particularly an object of history, farther mention of him may best be reserved for future opportunity.

Various, uncertain, and imperfect, then, as the accounts were which passed to posterity concerning the early Attic princes, yet the assurance of Thucydides may deserve respect, that Attica was the province of Greece in which population first became settled, and where the earliest progress was made toward civilisation. Being nearly peninsular, it lay out of the road of emigrants and wandering freebooters by land; and its rocky soil, supporting few cattle, afforded small temptation to either. The produce of tillage was of less easy removal; and the gains of commerce were secured within fortifications. Attica therefore grew populous, not only through the safety which the natives thus enjoyed, but by a confluence of strangers from other parts of Greece; for when either foreign invasion or intestine broil occasioned anywhere the necessity of emigration, Athens was the resort in highest estimation not only as a place of the most permanent security, but also as strangers of character, able by their wealth or their ingenuity to support themselves and benefit the community, were easily admitted to the privilege of citizens.

But, as population increased, the simple forms of government and jurisprudence established by Cecrops were no longer equal to their purpose. Civil wars arose; the country was invaded by sea: Erechtheus, called by later authors Erichthonius, and by the poets Son of the Earth, acquired the sovereignty, bringing, according to some not improbable reports, a second colony from Egypt.[9] Eumolpus, with a body of Thracians, about the same time established himself in Eleusis. When, a generation or two later, Ægeus, contemporary with Minos, succeeded his father Pandion in the throne, the country seems to have been well peopled, but the government ill constituted and weak. Concerning this prince, however, and his immediate successor, tradition is more ample; and though abundantly mixed with fable, yet in many instances apparently more authentic than concerning any other persons of their remote age. Plutarch has thought a history of Theseus, son of Ægeus, not unfit to hold a place among his parallel lives of the great men of Greece and Rome; and his account appears warranted in many points by strong corresponding testimony from other ancient authors of various ages. The period also is so important in the annals of Attica, and the reports remaining altogether go so far to illustrate the manners and circumstances of the times, that it may be proper to allow them some scope in narration.

Ægeus, king of Athens, though an able and spirited prince, yet, in the divided and disorderly state of his country, with difficulty maintained his situation. When past the prime of life he had the misfortune to remain childless, though twice married; and a faction headed by his presumptive heirs, the numerous sons of Pallas his younger brother, gave him unceasing disturbance. Thus urged, he went to Delphi to implore information from the oracle how the blessing of children might be obtained. Receiving an answer which, like most of the oracular responses, was unintelligible, his next concern was to find some person capable of explaining to him the will of the deity thus mysteriously declared. Among the many establishments which Pelops had procured for his family throughout Peloponnesus was the small town and territory of Trœzen on the coast opposite to Athens, which he placed under the government of his son Pittheus. Ægeus applied to that prince; who was not only in his own age eminent for wisdom, but of reputation remaining even in the most flourishing period of Grecian philosophy; yet so little was he superior to the ridiculous, and often detestable superstition of his time that, in consequence of some fancied meaning in the oracle, which even the superstitious Plutarch confesses himself unable to comprehend, he introduced his own daughter Æthra to an illicit commerce with Ægeus. Perhaps it may be allowed to conjecture that the commerce was unknown to the Trœzenian prince till the consequence became evident, and that the interpretation of the oracle was an ensuing resource to obviate disgrace.

The affairs of Attica being in great confusion required the return of Ægeus. His departure from Trœzen is marked by an action which, to persons accustomed to consider modern manners only, may appear unfit to be related but in a fable, yet is so consonant to the manners of the times, and so characteristical of them, as to demand the notice of the historian. He led Æthra to a sequestered spot where was a small cavity in a rock. Depositing there a hunting-knife and a pair of sandals, he covered them with a marble fragment of enormous weight; and then addressing Æthra, “If,” said he, “the child you now bear should prove a boy, let the removal of this stone be one day the proof of his strength; when he can effect it, send him with the tokens underneath to Athens.”

Pittheus, well knowing the genius and the degree of information of his subjects and fellow-countrymen, thought it not too gross an imposition to report that his daughter was pregnant by the god Poseidon, or, as we usually call him with the Latins, Neptune, esteemed the tutelary deity of the Trœzenians. A similar expedient seems indeed to have been often successfully used to cover the disgrace which, even in those days, would otherwise attend such irregular amours in a lady of high rank, though women of lower degree appear to have derived no dishonour from concubinage with their superiors. Theseus was the produce of the singular connection of Æthra with Ægeus. He is said to have been carefully educated under the inspection of his grandfather, and to have given early proofs of uncommon vigour both of body and mind. On his attaining manhood, his mother, in pursuance of the injunction of Ægeus, unfolded to him the reality of his parentage, and conducted him to the rock where his father’s tokens were deposited. He removed the stone which covered them, with a facility indicating that superior bodily strength so necessary in those days to support the pretensions of high birth; and thus encouraged she recommended to him to carry them to Ægeus at Athens. This proposal perfectly suited the temper and inclination of Theseus; but when he was farther advised to go by sea on account of the shortness and safety of the passage, piracy being about this time suppressed by the naval power of Minos, king of Crete, he positively refused.

THESEUS

The age of Theseus was the great era of those heroes, to whom the knights errant of the Gothic kingdoms afterwards bore a close resemblance. Hercules was his near kinsman. The actions of that extraordinary personage are reported to have been for some years the subject of universal conversation, and both an incentive and a direction to young Theseus in the road to fame. After having destroyed the most powerful and atrocious freebooters throughout Greece, Hercules, according to Plutarch, was gone into Asia; and those disturbers of civil order, whom his irresistible might and severe justice had driven to conceal themselves, took advantage of his absence to renew their violences. Being not obscure and vagabond thieves, but powerful chieftains, who openly defied law and government, the dangers to be expected from them were well known at Trœzen. Theseus however persevered in his resolution to go by land; alleging that it would be shameful, if, while Hercules was traversing earth and sea to repress the common disturbers of mankind, he should avoid those at his door, disgracing his reputed father by an ignominious flight over his own element, and carrying to his real father, for tokens, a bloodless weapon and sandals untrodden, instead of giving proofs of his high birth by actions worthy of it.